SEO is changing in a fundamental way. As artificial intelligence influences how people find information online, traditional SEO strategies focused purely on driving traffic are becoming increasingly less effective.
The shift toward conversion-focused SEO is slowly becoming a nessesity driven by Google’s own evolution and the new ways user behaviour is shifting due to the wide spread adoption of LLMs.
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Executive Summary
In this article, I explore the fundamental shift happening in SEO due to the influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on how people find information online. Traditional SEO strategies focused on driving traffic are becoming less effective, and the need for a conversion-focused SEO approach is becoming necessary.
The evolution of Google’s search engine prioritizes commercial and navigational intent on search engine results pages (SERPs) while serving keywords with informational intent in AI overviews. This change is driven by a shift in user behavior, with people increasingly turning to AI chatbots and language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini for quick answers, particularly among younger demographics.
The value proposition of informational content is shifting, with its ability to generate meaningful engagement diminishing as users prefer AI interfaces or AI overviews for information gathering. To adapt to these changes, successful SEO strategies will need to follow a dual-track approach:
1. Strategic Informational Content: Create specialized informational content that captures traffic from AI questions, appears in Google’s AI overviews or featured snippets, and drives newsletter signups or other forms of engagement when users click through. This content needs to offer unique insights, primary research, or expert analysis to demonstrate tangible value.
2. Commercial Intent Optimization: Craft pages that target users with clear commercial or navigational intent, providing all needed information to showcase why your business is the right decision and driving users closer to a purchase decision. This includes strategically developed content types such as product comparison pages, comprehensive buying guides, service evaluation content, features pages, implementation tutorials, and guides.
In conclusion, SEO is evolving into a more general channel that will likely be more neatly integrated with product development and social media. This transformation is not the death of SEO but rather its evolution into an even more comprehensive approach that prioritizes conversion-focused strategies.
How is Search changing
Google’s search engine is evolving rapidly, with a trajectory toward prioritizing commercial and navigational intent on the SERPs while serving keywords with informational intent in AI overviews.
The culprit behind this is that we’re observing a clear user behavior change. As people become more comfortable with AI chatbots and LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, they’re increasingly turning to these tools for quick answers rather than traditional Google searches.
This shift is particularly noticeable among younger demographics, who show a preference for conversational AI interfaces over traditional search engines for information gathering.
The value proposition of informational content is undergoing a shift. While such content drove substantial traffic in the past, its ability to generate meaningful engagement is diminishing as user prefer to use LLMs interface or AI overviews to inform themselves before entering commercial intent and looking through the available options.
What does this mean for your SEO strategy?
Given these changes, successful SEO strategies of the near future will likely need to follow a dual-track approach:
1: Strategic Informational Content
The first track involves creating highly specialized informational content specifically designed to:
- Capture traffic from LLM questions
- Appear in Google’s AI overviews or featured snippets
- Drive newsletter signups and other forms of engagement when users click through
- Evergreen content
This content needs to be sophisticated. It should offer unique insights, primary research, or expert analysis that AI systems will want to reference and humans will find valuable enough to engage with beyond the snippet.
Simply creating informational content and expecting organic traffic is no longer effective. Similarly, investing heavily in content creation guided only by basic keyword research has become an outdated strategy that fails to deliver consistent scalable results.
Each piece of content needs to demonstrate tangible value, simply fullfilling user intent is simply not enough. Being able to rank content on the SERP is no longer effective strategy as user’s prefered choice is to use LLM or fuly rely on the answer provide in the AI overview.
Your piece of content will be overlooked or skimmed through very quickly. This has to be the default assumption.
Informational content has to serve a different purpose than leading to a direct conversions. One might argue informational content now works on the principles of brand building and social media. And different expectations for it might end up being misguided.
2: Commercial Intent Optimization
The second track will focuses on crafting pages that target users with clear commercial or navigational intent – those who are actively seeking solutions and are closer to making a purchase decision.
The users, part of this group already know about you and your brand, or have a clear idea about what they want/need.
The goal for these searches will continue to be driving the user towards a conversion. Your main job will be to provide all needed information to showcase why your business is the right decision, how you can solve the problem the user is facing and drive him closer to a purchase decision.
This includes strategically developed content types such as:
- Product comparison pages
- Comprehensive buying guides
- Service evaluation content
- Features pages
- Implementation tutorials and guides
The content should be primarily optimized for conversion, with CTAs naturally positioned throughout the user’s reading journey. Basically nothing has really changed, except, we’re getting closer to some form of CRO (conversion-rate-optimisation).
As we learned from the latest leaks, Google is tracking user behaviour (Long clicks, short clicks, bounces, etc) SEOs will have to pay attention to user satisfaction signals when it comes to commercial pages.
This means, this side of SEO will evolve into some form of CRO/UX + traditional SEO.
Conclusion
If there’s one thing we know to be true about SEO is that it’s always changing. Maybe this time SEO is truly going to die as we’ve been warned for years but only if what we imply by dead is transformation into something new.
SEO has already evolved from keyword-stuffing and backlink-buying to the topical authority and user experience-driven approach we see today.
What we’re currently witnessing is not the death of SEO per se but its transformation into an even more general channel that will likely be even more neatly integrated with both product development and social media.
Notes:
– According to Statista, 27% of global online users are already using AI chatbots for information searches (2023)
– HubSpot research shows that 75% of Gen Z prefers using search engines with AI features
– A 2023 SimilarWeb study found that educational/informational queries saw a 23% decrease in click-through rates compared to 2022
– According to Conductor, conversion rates from organic search are 14% higher for pages that load in under 2 seconds
– Google reports that 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load